Stargate: Who is doing what? One pays (Masayoshi Son), One builds (Sam Altman), One hosts (Larry ... [+] Ellison), One helps (President Donald Trump)Lutz FingerPresident Donald Trump just announced Stargate, a $500 billion AI investment backed by SoftBank, Oracle, MGX, and OpenAI over the next four years.Whats Actually Happening?Lets put it differently: OpenAI just secured a major customerStargate. SoftBank will finance the deal, while Oracle will provide the infrastructure for OpenAIs AI services. This is good news for OpenAI. Training AI models is expensive, and open-source AI is catching up fast. OpenAIs only path forward is securing exclusive access to data and users.As I wrote in The Race for AI Agents: "To dominate AI agents, companies need access to users and enterprise data." OpenAI and Oracle both lag behind in these areas. This deal sends a message.The $500 billion Message To ChinaA $500 billion message: We will catch up we will outcompete you. For President Trump, this message is aimed at China. But others heard it too, including Elon Musk, who missed the AI lead and has tried to catch up through lawsuits and ethical arguments. Not being part of Stargate, he quickly dismissed it as half-baked.To which Sam Altman responded, "Wrong," and then questioned:"I realize whats good for the country isnt always good for your companies, but in your new role, I hope youll put America first."Easy for Altman to saythis deal is clearly great news for OpenAI. But is it equally good for America?Why Announce This At The White House?MORE FOR YOUThe AI race isnt just about OpenAI vs. Musks Grokits about who will dominate global technology and maintain hegemonic power. AI is set to reshape industries, and whoever leads in AI will reshape the worlds power structure. Back in 2019, I warned that Chinas aggressive data collection strategy would give it a long-term AI advantage over the U.S. Today, the gap between the U.S. and China seems narrower than ever.Chinas DeepSeeks R1Take the latest quest for AI reasoning. I predicted in my podcast with Jasper Masemann that: AI reasoning will be the main development in 2024. By the end of 2024, Sam Altman claimed OpenAI now knows how to build reasoning AI agents. How? I described the process in The Battle of Tech Giants: "o1 is designed for reasoning through an iterative, self-calling process." Now, after less than 60 days, this technological edge is gone. China has caught up. DeepSeeks R1, a Chinese AI model, uses the same self-critique and iterative learning approach with stunning results.AI Hegemony: Who Will Lead?DeepSeeks R1 is an open-source model, and soon many startup founders will experiment with it indirectly helping China in its challenge to U.S. AI dominance. And the irony? This is happening despite U.S. efforts to block China from accessing AI technology or perhaps because of those bans, which forced China to stay ahead by open-sourcing its models. Given all this, its no surprise that Trump chose the White House as the backdrop for a $500 billion We will outcompete you announcement.Trump Rolls Back Bidens AI RegulationsAlongside Stargate, Trump is also rolling back Bidens Executive Order 14110, which imposed AI regulations. Those had been criticized by me and others for not being effective. As I wrote in Bidens AI Plan: "...the White House seems to think AI can be controlled like nuclear weapons. But its not that simple." And clearly, it wasnt. At least, the order didnt stop OpenAI or China if anything, it pushed them to innovate faster.The AI Race Is Wide OpenWith China pushing forward and the U.S. making massive investments, the AI race is far from settled. The core question remains the same: Its not who has the best AIbut who controls the data and who builds products that businesses and people actually use. The journey is just beginning.